


Filigree

by falter



Category: Against Me!, Mindless Self Indulgence
Genre: F/F, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 07:42:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13970454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falter/pseuds/falter
Summary: 13. lyn-z/laura jane grace, crash-landed on an alien planetMisunderstandings. IN SPACE!!!





	Filigree

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the mods, and to my prompter for delightful ideas. I hope I did it justice!

(6)

The bolt Lindsey’s been trying to loosen for the past hour doesn’t give any warning before it shears, snapping in half, and the sudden loss of resistance makes her rock back in the confines of the access tube and then face first into the edge of the open maintenance hatch. 

“Fuck.”

“…You okay?”

And that nearly makes her bump into the sides of the tube again. Laura must be right behind her, watching the bottoms of Lindsey’s boots through the access entry in the wall like a fucking creep. Lindsey’d left her on the other side of the ship — no, not the ship, she corrects herself — the wreck. She’s not the ship Lindsey had spent years pampering and coaxing anymore. It’s just another wreck to strip. Nothing left to care about, especially now that Salma and the rest of the crew have carried off the least damaged, highest value, and easiest to carry parts of her. It. Fuck.

Anyway. She’d left Laura on the other side of the wreck, busy packing yesterday’s salvage. But of course she’s here in perfect time to witness Lindsey looking like she doesn’t know how to clean-strip a carcass. 

Fine. Lindsey’s got nothing to prove.

Her lip’s split, though. She can feel her sweat stinging against the raw spot, and taste the blood.

She eases herself back, shimmying her way out of the tube until her hips are out and her legs dangle down the wall, feet searching out the ledge she knows is just a few more inches down and to the side. There’s a warm nudge at her ankle. Laura again. 

She sighs at herself, gives up, and lets Laura guide her.

There. Normal enough. Crewmates.

She drops down to the deck, then ducks her head to dab at her lip. It’s just barely oozing blood. She kneels and starts packing the gaskets she’d managed to scavenge into her duffel.

She can see Laura’s boots at the edge of her field of vision. Still just standing there, and when Lindsey looks up, she catches her staring, looking at the mess Lindsey’s made of her mouth.

Whatever. Let her judge. Lindsey stares back, raises her chin until Laura meets her eyes. For just a moment, Lindsey thinks maybe she’s got this wrong. Laura looks almost — something. Like she’s going to say something, make Lindsey talk about it. 

Nope. 

Lindsey grins wide and mocking, knowing her teeth have a sheen of blood, feeling the stretch of her torn lip as it splits wider.

Laura looks away first.

 

(1)

Lindsey feels new, her first day out of the service. 

She hadn’t hated her time in infantry, not like some had, and she hadn’t loved it either. But she did okay. Well enough that she earned the right to keep her ink, and not just the parts that showed service history. 

She spends the first six months letting her hair grow out, sleeping when she feels like it, eating what she wants, renting a space to stay that she doesn’t have to share with anyone.

It’s amazing until it isn’t.

She feels new all over again, though, going down to the docks with everything she owns in a duffel. She spends a few hours wandering, watching the crews. Judging the ships. 

The one she picks is beautiful. Her crew’s not. They’ve got an ease to them, though. She likes it. They’re bare-armed in the heat, every one of them she’s seen. 

She drops her duffel and shrugs off her jacket, and waits for them to notice.

It doesn’t take long.

Salma’s in charge. She’s got a hard look to her, but Lindsey heard her laughing before, waits out the silences. She lets Salma take a long look at her ink, then starts talking through who she is. Who she was before she hit draft age, who she wants to be now that she’s done. What she learned and what she knew before and why she quit when her compulsories were done. 

Salma nods, listening with only the occasional hard look or question. Lindsey knows she can earn her spot on a crew easy enough, but she likes that Salma doesn’t agree immediately, despite the value etched into her skin, scrolling over her arms, the interfaces that Lindsey spent years earning and supplementing, adding decoration in every port, after every successful mission.

Lindsey bunks with the crew for the next week in one of the refit dorms attached to the docks. They’re cagey about what their business is around her, but they’re easy enough with their spirits and their smokes, and Lindsey doesn’t mind. It’s not her business yet, clear enough. 

All five of the crew wind up bunking with her in turn, and they don’t pretend to be doing other than cataloging her ink when they hit the showers.

It gives her a chance to look just as closely at them. None of them have much in the way of service record retained, just the minimum that everyone’s discharged with. The two shift pilots have the necessary interface sleeves, but nothing beyond that, and their decorative work is all civilian, none of it adding calculation or diagnostic enhancement.

By the end of the week, though, she’s confident that this is a crew she’s happy to be part of, not just one she can make work.

And when they finally take her aboard the ship. She’s amazing. She’s even more beautiful on the inside than she was outside — they’ve done some really clever things with her displacement engine, and they’ve left the beautiful vaults of her center open, so that she looks like a cathedral out of one of the historical dramas.

They’re using her to run the salvage lanes; Lindsey had guessed it was something like that. She likes the idea: keep moving, keep exploring. It’s like the parts of the service they talked about in the news pitched to the kids just coming up to draft age. Romantic, but still grimy and hard and real. Just barely on the wrong side of legal, and without all the killing. So not much like the service at all.

Lindsey settles into ops, slips her arms into the conductive gel cradles, and lets the ship’s engines sing to her.

 

(2)

Lindsey’s been with her ship, part of Salma’s crew, for just past three years when Sara decides to retire and head back to the marketplex where she was raised. It happens, crews have a natural turnover, tired of the work or overwhelmed by space or tired of each other, or, like Sara, homesick, even when home is a warren of run-down underpopulated apartments and decaying bazaars in what used to be a space station. 

It’s not where Lindsey is going to go when she leaves the ship, is all. If she leaves. 

They see Sara off with ten days of drinking, laughing until they cry, bleary and miserable when they put her on the commuter shuttle. They watch until its gone, then find the closest dorm to sleep it off. 

Salma’s settled the bill and headed back to the ship when the rest of them wake up. They’re all quiet. Everyone knew Sara longer than Lindsey had, but this is the first time she’s seen a shipmate leave a crew alive, and it’s throwing her. It’s different from the service; she knew it would be. It’s still weirdly hard to believe that Sara’s still living when the rest of them head back to the ship.

She’s also got a hangover like she hasn’t had in years. The headache’s making the bright lights and heat of the port harder to take. It means she’s preoccupied when they straggle back aboard the ship, and it takes her longer than it should to notice the woman talking with Salma. 

Talking with Salma, leaning easily against the bulkhead leading to the berths. She’s tall, and she looks even taller next to the captain — Salma’s small in the way that’s useful aboard ships, and this woman is the opposite of that. She doesn’t look awkward, though.

Her hair is dark, and just brushing her shoulders. It has the ragged-ends look that you see when someone’s first left service, and Lindsey’s eyes go automatically to her arms. She’s wearing a jacket, though — sleeves hanging long, nearly covering her hands. 

Salma finishes talking with the woman and turns to face them, and the crew settles into their seats around the lounge, expectant.

“This is Laura,” Salma says. “Laura Jane. I’m putting her in Sara’s place.”

Laura turns to face them and smiles, and Lindsey sees, then, the ink feathers curling up to cradle her spine, curving toward her throat. 

 

(5)

The thing about Laura is, despite the fact that she can only hobble around the wreck, the way that Lindsey can fit into spaces she can’t, the way that Lindsey doesn’t tell her what part of the wreck she’ll be stripping, avoids the galley, only heads back to the berths when Laura’s already in her own bunk: she’s always right there. 

It’s like she doesn’t know to let Lindsey get her pride back in peace. 

 

(3)

It’s hard for Lindsey, when Laura first joins the ship. She can admit that to herself, at least. Laura didn’t have to prove herself to the crew, didn’t have to be accepted. She just was. She fit without trying.

Laura doesn’t flaunt her ink, though she’s got the sort of decorations that Lindsey had thought were tall tales when she was in the service herself. Laura has the curving feather regalia of a volunteer, and just as much interface, decorated just as intricately, as Lindsey has herself. Lindsey has never even seen a volunteer before. It seems strange, and archaic, but at the same time it speaks of political conviction. Enough to stand for service, and, since Laura’s here, part of their crew and not making a career of it, enough to opt out. 

Lindsey feels awkward by comparison. Accidental, drifting where she’s been told to. 

Maybe she’s overthinking it.

She keeps her distance, though. Spends more of her time fine-tuning the ship, combing through their findings, sliding herself into third shift.

Salma pulls her aside a few times, but she’s satisfied when Lindsey says she’s just changing things up for a bit. Lindsey almost believes it herself.

She’s feeling more settled once they’ve been in space for a few weeks, anyway.

She’s in the galley lingering over her porridge when Laura walks in and sits down across from her, sets her elbows on the table, and smiles.

“Lindsey, right? You’ve been busy, we’ve barely met.” Laura offers a hand, and Lindsey takes it. Her grip is steady and strong, and her skin is warm. Laura’s face is open and beautiful, and Lindsey thinks her hair is already longer than it was the first time she’d seen her. Lindsey can feel Laura’s smile echoed on her own face, and she wonders for a moment why she’s let herself feel hurt that Laura joined them so easily. It’s got nothing to do with Lindsey, after all. 

Laura’s gaze drops in the way Lindsey remembers being used to, once, but there’s an odd pause to it, Laura looking somewhere that isn’t her eyes for just a moment before the expected evaluation of the battle histories circling her right forearm, the awards curving around her right bicep, the scrollwork and flowers, birds and mottos that camouflage the irregular interface patterns that cover parts of both her right and left arm. 

Lindsey looks back at Laura, making the same evaluation out of habit and good military etiquette. But she stops short as soon as she starts. Laura’s blacked out her entire right arm. No history, no recognition, just a solid black sleeve hiding the irregular patterns of interface. More than Lindsey has. More than she’s ever seen one person carry. The only thing left of her service history is the discharge pattern at her right wrist. 

Lindsey only feels herself staring longer than she should once it’s too late to pretend she’s doing anything else. 

“Sorry,” she says, and clears her throat when it comes out faint. “Sorry.” Lindsey glances at Laura’s left arm — just the expected decorative work camouflaging the interfaces there — and looks back up at her face. Laura’s still smiling, though she looks a little sheepish now.

“It’s alright,” she says, “I don’t mind.”

 

(4)

They don’t become friends, not right away. But Laura stays, and Lindsey stops thinking of her as a mystery, and starts thinking of her as part of the ship.

And she still loves this ship. She’s beautiful, and fast, and Lindsey doesn’t feel jealous at all when she watches Laura set her arms into the gel cradles, and the hum of the engines resonates through the ship like a purr. 

Eventually, though, they strip enough old battle sites and abandoned supply caches together that they do become friends. 

It’s hard, sometimes, to clear salvage. Lindsey’s never sure if it’s easier for the rest of the crew, or harder. She knows enough about their service to guess none of them were part of direct battles. There’s no real risk that they’ll know the names of the bodies they clear, not the way Lindsey and Laura might. 

They pair up. Neither of them asks the other why they take the long way around the wrecks to get to the sellable parts, not when they’re together. 

There’s a rhythm to it, and part of it’s the way they’ve had the same kinds of tours, and part of it’s something else. 

Lindsey’s not quite sure about the something else, but she’s hopeful that it’s what she wants it to be.

She still feels a little intimidated, and when she’s alone in her head too long, a little displaced. She’s not a pilot, the benefit she brings to the crew is only a small part skill and knowledge. She’d been relying on her ink for value, and when Laura turned up, Lindsey felt a little less necessary. 

When she’s not alone in her head she knows better. She thinks, maybe, that she and Laura are more to Salma — bring more value to the crew —together than they would individually.

Sometimes, though, Lindsey finds herself thinking about Laura in the quiet times: before she falls asleep, while she’s waking up, when she’s soothed the ship through a new map, and when she works a galley shift. Laura’s quick with her smile, and sharp with her beliefs. She does have all the convictions her inked regalia had hinted at; more, really. It’s not hard to guess why chose not to stay in the service. She’s angry to her core, a bright righteous rage at the way things are, at the draft, at the things they’d both seen. The useless death and rote battles. 

Lindsey can’t stop thinking about it. 

She’s no fool, though, she knows herself. And she believes in action, in following her gut, taking the leap.

So when she and Laura are the only ones left in the galley that morning, she stands, and turns Laura’s chair, and screws up her nerve. 

She lets her fingers dance along the inside of Laura’s arm, tracing the main line of interface, pausing at the outline of a bird in flight, then looks a question at Laura.

Laura, though. Her expression is hard to read. Not puzzled, exactly, but definitely a question.

Lindsey’s ready with the answer, though, and she leans in, and kisses her.

That’s when the klaxons start, and the ship rocks with impact. 

Laura’s jerked back, away from her, frowning, shoving out of her seat and running out of the room.

Well, thinks Lindsey. At least it wasn’t awkward.

Later, after they’ve managed to just barely bring the ship down, crashing on the nearest demilitarized planet, she reconsiders. 

They’d hit a mine field, not recorded in Lindsey’s ink, even though they’d been traveling through a sector she’d passed through on active duty. Maybe it had drifted, or maybe her interfaces just didn’t hold everything she’d thought they did. Or maybe she’d been sloppy when she’d charted it, distracted. 

The crew survived it. The ship hasn’t. Not as anything but salvage. Jeanne’s broken her wrist, Kitty’s got smoke damage to her lungs. Laura’d twisted her ankle on her run to the bridge.

Small mercies. Laura needs to stay with the ship, then, while the rest of them walk to the settlement and suss out a way to transport themselves back to a decent-sized port.

She’ll be fine for the weeks until they get back with a new ship. And if they don’t get back with a new ship, she’ll be fine until she can walk to the settlement herself.

No one else agrees Laura should be left alone, and they're a known team. Fuck.

 

(7)

Lindsey’s stacked everything she’s stripped from the wreck in the hold. It still looks like an old-time cathedral to her. If she doesn’t look at the pile of salvage she’s amassed, doesn’t look at the dark monitors, she can imagine she’s still new to the ship.

It’s a nice thought, and it makes her linger.

She doesn’t hear the quiet steps behind her until it’s too late to think of somewhere else to be.

“Lyn?” Laura’s voice is soft, quiet. Careful, even.

Lindsey turns, raising her chin a little to look Laura in the eye. So she wants to make the rejection explicit, talk it through, sort out the boundaries. Fine. Unnecessary, but fine. Lindsey can take it. 

Laura’s quiet though, and the moment stretches with her just looking. 

Lindsey can be the first to speak. She knows her mind, knows she can take that dare.

“Yeah?” She says. “You want to —“ Talk about it, she’s going to say. Tell me to get my shit together.

But.

Oh.

Laura’s cupped her jaw and her fingertips are along Lindsey’s neck and she’s kissing Lindsey, sweet and careful and thorough.

Oh.

Lindsey can admit when she's wrong. She stops trying to talk.


End file.
